Willie Loomis walked back to the Old House through trees that filtered the autumn sunlight into soft green and gold. It would be dark in a few hours, and he didn't dare be away from the house when Barnabas... When the sun set.

Six months he had been here. Six months in the year of our Lord nineteen-hundred-and-sixty-seven. Half a year stolen out of his already-wasted life. But now, Willie feared, he might never know any other life than this one. Here, with a dark and terrible finality, was a plane of existence from which he would, in all likelihood, never escape.

He broke from the cover of the trees into the afternoon sun, and immediately froze within sight of the Old House.

Someone was inside the house.

A car was parked on the circular drive that ran past the mansion; a car that he did not recognize as belonging to Julia Hoffman, Dave Woodard, or to any of the Collins family.

Panicked, Willie ran the rest of the way, shocked to discover, when he reached it, that the door was unlocked. It hadn't been open when he'd left this morning. He'd been very sure of that.

Check the basement first. Make sure he's all right. Can't figure how anyone could get in here. I locked the door. I know I did...

The basement was undisturbed, its metal door still securely padlocked; the secret it held still safe. Willie breathed a sigh of genuine relief and headed up the stairs to search.

Three bedrooms he found empty. Then he opened the door to Josette's room. ..

The first thing he saw was that the portrait of Josette was gone from its customary place of honor over the fireplace. The second thing was an artist's easel set up near the window, and the attractive young woman with dark wavy hair who stood before it. She was looking at him with a startled expression on her face, her mouth forming a little "o" of surprise.

"What are you doin'?" Willie demanded. "How'd you get in here?!"

"Oh, " she said, completing the shape her mouth had already made. "You must be Willie. I remember now. He told me about you."

"Yeah? Who are you? An' what are you doin' to that painting?"

"My name is Overton. Mary Overton. And Mr. Collins hired me to clean the portrait -- to restore the paint colors to their original hue."

"Mr. Col-- Barnabas hired you?"

She looked puzzled at his confusion. "Is that so unusual?"

Willie, unprepared for this confrontation entirely, was totally caught off guard. "Yeah, well ... It's just... He didn' tell me, is all. "

"Oh. I'm sorry. I spoke to him last night at the restaurant down in the village. He gave me a key . He said it would be all right to let myself in. "

Willie's eyes narrowed at that, realization beginning at last to dawn. Moving closer, he openly examined her throat for some sign of the telltale marks that he was half sure would be there. They weren't, but Mary shrank from his sudden scrutiny as though it had been he who'd meant to harm her rather than the man she had seen last night.

"Are you... are you all right?" she asked timidly. "Is something wrong?"

Willie answered the question with another question of his own. "Barnabas told you to wait till he got home tonight, did he?"

She placed a can of cleaning fluid that he hadn't noticed until now she'd been holding back on the rim of the easel.

I... Well as a matter of fact, no. He didn't. But I was through for the day anyhow." She gathered some other belongings from the bed and abruptly headed for the door. "I was just about to leave."

"That's a good idea, " Willie agreed, a little too quickly. Thinking better of his manners then, he followed her back out and down the stairs, adding, "You'll have better light tomorrow anyhow. Ain't no electricity in this house."

"So I was told."

"Oh... And don't stay around past this time of day if cleanin' that thing takes you that long tomorrow. Barnabas -- Mr. Collins -- he don't like people hangin' around here when he's in."

She paused at the front door, eyeing him a bit suspiciously. "Thank you, Willie. By the way, are you always this hospitable?"

He didn't know how to answer that, so instead, he took her jacket from the coatrack, handed it to her, and ushered her formally out the door.

Less than an hour later, Willie was waiting on the stone steps of the Old House basement. Waiting until Barnabas Collins had risen from his day-long sleep of death and turned around to face him.

"You look worried, Willie. What's the matter?"

"Why'd you send that girl here? The one who was upstairs today, cleanin' Josette's portrait?"

"If you're referring to Miss Overton, I hired her to do precisely that."

"What for?"

"Don't be obtuse, Willie. I've just told you. . ."

"I don' mean that!" Willie took deep breaths, trying hard not to stammer and failing. "You... you know w-what I'm askin'. You brought her here so you could hurt her, like the others. Like Maggie."

Barnabas' expression darkened to one of slowly-building rage. "You presume too much. Mary is here to perform the task for which she was paid. Nothing more."

"Yeah." Willie's tone more than clearly conveyed his disbelief. "Sure."

He turned to retreat up the stairs before Barnabas' anger could escalate into anything more.
 

"I still don't understand why you stay, " Mary said the next afternoon. She and Willie had talked for most of the morning while she worked on the portrait. It had been the first time in many months (or more likely, he thought, in many years) that Willie had carried on a reasonably normal conversation with anyone.

"I got no place else to go," he answered, hoping that the half truth wouldn't be as transparent as it felt. "I got no more family. Nobody to care. So I stay."

"But you don't seem very happy here. Don't you and Mr. Collins get along?"

"Uh... We get along fine, " he lied, impressed with her powers of perception but unwilling to hint at anything that might even approximate the truth. "I guess I jus' never had anything to be especially happy about. Not much ever happens around here." Another lie, But one he dearly hoped she would believe. If nothing here were interesting, maybe she would go.

"There, " Mary said, and stepped back from the portrait with a cleaning cloth still in her hand. "Josette is herself again. More beautiful than ever."

Willie gave the siren-sad face in the portrait no more than a passing inspection. He didn't want to think about the horror the real Josette had lived... and died.

"I think, " Mary was saying, "that she was meant to be looked at by candlelight. Don't you?"

Shaken from his reverie, Willie started. Candlelight! He'd been so engrossed in their conversation, he'd forgotten that they'd lit the tiers of candies in the room to better illuminate her work. Now, with dread gnawing at the pit of his stomach, he saw that sunlight was fading outside the window. He'd lost track of the time ...

"You gotta go, " he said quickly, and took her by the arm to hurry her. "It's time..."

"Willie -- my things --"

"Willie ... You're being quite rude to our guest."

Both of them spun to face the imposing figure of Barnabas Collins.

Mary, prying Willie's fingers from her arm, managed a gracious nod. "I'm afraid we lost track of the time, Mr. Collins. But the portrait is finished. I can pick up my things and be on my way."

"Surely there's no need for such a hurry, " Barnabas said with a suspicious glance at Willie. His dark eyes found hers then, and held them. "Perhaps you'd care to stay for a glass of sherry. "

"No, really. Thank you, but..."

Steadily, hungrily, the eyes bore into hers ... engulfing her, until...

Willie stepped between them.

"I'll see you out then," he said nervously, and he steered her once again for the door. "I'll bring your stuff to the inn tomorrow, after we're sure there ain't no more work to do on the painting."

He hustled her out and down the stairs, uncomfortably aware all the while of Barnabas' icy glare. When he came back into the shadowed foyer after seeing her off, he found the same icy glare waiting for him ...
 

Mary Overton had waited in the Collinsport Inn's cramped lobby for two hours past the time Willie had promised to arrive with her equipment. She decided, finally, to drive back to the Old House to find out for herself what had happened to him. When she arrived, she used the key Barnabas Collins had given her to let herself in, but she was met with eerie silence when she called Willie's name. She'd been about to climb the stairs when she heard something -- a muffled, child-like sob -- coming from the drawing room.

She found Willie on the floor not far from the massive fireplace -- with swelling, purplish bruises darkening his eyes and cheekbones.

"My God, Willie. What happened to you?"

"Don't come in here, " he sobbed, and struggled to sit up, one arm futilely trying to fend off her effort to help. "Don't you know he could come back? Get outta here!"

"He... ? Willie, it's morning. You said Barnabas never returns until... Did he do this? Is that what you were trying to warn me about?"

Willie pulled himself into a chair, cradling the pain in his head between two bleeding hands. "I fell," he said feebly.

"Willie, don't lie to me."

"I fell down a damn flight of stairs, all right? Please ... please don' ask me any more questions."

"You've got to leave here. Now, with me. We'll get you to a doctor."

"No."

"I don't believe you'd go on working for a man who could do this! You're a grown man, Willie. You can make your own choices!"

Tears choked his effort to answer her. "No. No I can't. Don't ask me anymore things I can't answer. just ... please. . . Leave me alone."

Mary wavered for a moment, torn between the request and her conscience. "No, " she said finally. "Not until I find some water and an antiseptic. We're going to take care of those contusions."
 

In his twenty-four years of life, Willie Loomis had never before been fussed over. And in spite of the pain Mary's ministrations brought, he discovered that he liked the attention. It was something new, this having someone around to talk with. Someone to notice him. Someone to care.

Autumn had covered the forest floor with gold -- gold that crunched beneath their feet as they walked, They hadn't spoken since leaving the house, but Mary, her hand now firmly grasping Willie's, finally broke the silence.

"All right," she said calmly. "I'll respect your wishes not to tell me what's happening here. But I won't stand by and let him kill you, either. If I have to do it by force, Willie Loomis, I'm going to take you away from here."

Miserably, Willie shook his head. "You don't know. You don't understand..." They came to a tree with browning grass still circling its trunk, and he sank down beside it, pulling her after. "I wish you'd find another thing for us to talk about. My head hurts enough already without more to remind me."

"You're impossible, " she fumed. "A man very nearly kills you, and you sit here telling me you'd rather talk about the weather. What's wrong, Willie? What hold does he have over you?"

"I never knew no one like you, " he told her, purposely evading the question. "Ain't nobody ever gave a damn before whether Willie Loomis was alive or dead. Why do you?"

She put a cautious hand to the darkening bruise on his cheek. "Because, you stubborn, thick-headed. . . " She let the sentence trail off, bending closer to him until her lips met his, forming a kiss that he willingly returned.

How many times had he fantasized a moment like this, only to be met, once the dream had ended, with the cruel reality that there was still no one to care?

Furtively, he put his arms around her, praying in earnest that she wouldn't shrink from the embrace. Instead, he found that she returned it, warmly and hardily, with an eagerness that he, too, was feeling.

Was this what falling in love was supposed to be like? All those passionate things people did in the movies; all the lovers he had seen kissing tenderly on street corners; all of them feeling like this?

Willie held her close to him and fought back tears that had suddenly threatened to surface. Someone to notice him. Someone to care.

She kissed him again, more vigorously this time, and Willie, no longer mindful of the pain in his injured face and hands, guided her gently from the rough bark of the tree trunk into the soft bed of grass that grew around them.. .

It was her last night in Collinsport. Asleep in her room in the Collinsport Inn, Mary found her dreams troubled by images of Willie. Whatever terrible secret he was keeping locked inside himself; the secret of whatever it was that held him to Barnabas Collins, she had to find a way, somehow, of freeing him. It would mean disobeying his emphatic demand that she leave Collinsport tomorrow. But that didn't matter. Only Willie mattered to her now.

Something cold and ... deathly ... came into her dream then. A shadow in a dark, Inverness cloak. It melted into being at the side of her bed, but when she sat up to scream, it stopped the sound in her throat with a mere motion of its outstretched hand.

The eyes found her then, and she knew them; remembered them. They were the eyes that had captured and held hers for that brief and terrible moment in the upstairs room of the Old House.

The eyes of Barnabas Collins.

Mary couldn't be certain at precisely which point the nightmare had shifted. She knew only that the horror that had been Barnabas Collins had changed somehow to something pleasantly euphoric; and it had begun when he had kissed her...

"Mary! Mary, wake up!"

Willie shook her, panic making him rougher than necessary. He'd seen them. The tiny marks that were visible now on her throat; the single drop of -blood staining the pillow. He'd waited too long. Too long to get her out of here, too long to save her from him. Unless.. .

"Wake up. Oh God, please wake up!"

He pulled her to a sitting position in the bed, shaking her more gently now until at last her eyes came slowly open. They failed, however, to focus on Willie, seeing instead something -- or someone -- that was no longer there.

"Barnabas, " she murmured.

Willie's heart sank, If he was too late -- if the attachment was already too strong for him to break -- then the only human being who had ever given a damn about him was going to die.

"No..."

Cursing himself for ever leaving her alone, Willie moved to the window and deliberately drew back the drapery, flooding the tiny inn room with morning sun. Mary turned away from it, covering her eyes.

"No," Willie repeated. "You gotta look at it. You gotta remember!" Back at her side, he forced her hands away from her eyes, trying desperately to make those eyes see him again. "You don't belong to the night, you hear me? Or to him. You belong to the sunlight, Mary. And me . Think. Remember yesterday. Please, try to remember yesterday!"

She blinked, and it seemed for a moment that she might have heard him. But her eyes very quickly grew distant once more. "Barnabas, " she said again.

Anger heightened Willie's tone. "Barnabas ain't here, " he told her. "And he ain't gonna be. Get up. Get dressed. You are gonna leave Collinsport this morning, just like you promised. I got your train ticket right here."

He pressed the envelope into her hand and folded her fingers over it. "Come on. You do what I say, or so help me God, I'll do it for you!"

For the first time, she looked at him. But it was not a look of recognition at all. "I won't leave him," she said flatly.

Willie remained resolute. "Oh yes you will. Now."

He tried to pull her to him, up to her feet and off the bed, but she fought the effort, slapping his hands away until he finally caught her, and ignoring the resistance, kissed her firmly, the way he had kissed her fourteen short hours ago. Her struggling grew weaker then, until finally, he was gratified to find she was no longer fighting him at all.

When he broke off the kiss, the dreamy look of Barnabas' spell had at long last faded from her eyes.

"Willie. . . " she said weakly. "Willie, I..."

"I know," he interrupted. "But you gotta forget about that now. And about him. Just get away from here -- as far away as you can."

She looked frightened, lost, confused: all the things that he had been six long, long months ago.

"Come with me, Willie. We'll leave together,"

Words began to fail him then. He didn't know how to tell her how much he longed to do that very thing.

"I. .. I can't, " he said miserably. "He won't let me leave him, not ever. I tried before -- you dunno how hard I tried. Only the last time, he said if I ever tried again, he... he'd..."

She silenced his stammer with a kiss born of both desperation and despondence. "I love you, Willie."

"I know..."

Tears stung Willie's eyes, refusing to be vanquished. He let them come. Because in a few hours, Mary -- his Mary -- would be gone, carried back into a world that knew such things as life and happiness and that illusory thing people called a future.

For Willie Loomis, who brief years ago had childishly bragged that the world was going to be his, there would never be any of those things, ever again.

He held her tightly to him, as though, somehow, he could magically live out a lifetime in the few fleeting moments they had left with each other.

He held her in order to strengthen the memory that once, if only once, someone had said to him, "I love you."

He held her so she wouldn't see the tears...